Why Do They Want Our Data?

Data is the backbone of the internet. Billions of bits of data flow through the internet every second. What rest within that data is the keys to the future of communications, commerce and the global community of people conversing for whatever purpose.

Data is also the backbone of industry, economics, government and society. Without data nothing can connect to anything and without a connection nothing moves.

The Data Of Commerce

Is the data of commerce a conversation or an advertisement?

Edo Sega writes in the Washington Post: In a way we are all virtual stock holders in Twitter. We all have a vested interest in its success. Facebook is soon to monopolize the social stream to the same extent that Google has done with search. That is not good for anyone, including Facebook. I have had many discussions with people in recent weeks about the face-off between twitter and Facebook and also about the high probability of Twitter cutting a deal with Google.

Twitter is important. How often does a company come along that really changes consumer behavior? That creates a new form of media consumption and connectivity? For all the thousands of startups covered on Techcrunch only a few have a profound impact on the arc of internet history. Twitter has earned its spot in that pantheon and now it remains to be seen if it can play a bigger role in how to monetize the stream and in the process build a real business.

Twitter has a unique opportunity to innovate and create new forms of useful advertising that will truly help both users and advertisers. This was the key to Google’s success and is the key to Twitter’s future. It takes time for advertising to become useful as it requires a significant liquidity of ads.

Innovate Data And Connectivity To Consumption Rather Than Advertising

The economy of intent ought to be focused on consumer preferences, usability and privileges.  Advertising and marketing methods are old, out dated in intrusive.  Finding a product,  service, person or topic is a utility which Google and Twitter provide. However, the utility is shifting from the “machines” to the people and connected conversations that produce a new currency.

What people consume is relevant to their affinities. Affinities are relevant to people, things and behavior. The utility of advertising schemes and delivery systems is no longer relevant to conversations.  What is relevant to a conversation is the experience, awareness and utility of products and services which people share with others every day. The currency of commerce is now threaded into the conversations.

Real innovation for advertisers and marketers will come when people can get what they want and need or desire easily and at their choice.  Communities will evolve and within those communities will be “utilities” which provide consumers with quick and easy access to what they want when they want it or when a friend shares it or  discovers it and at the lowest possible cost.  This innovations will come as part of Conversational Currency, the new economic paradigm.  They want our data so they can advertise directly to us. We don’t want advertisements rather we want conversational currency. Get it?

What say you?